


MAD MOON

by faufaren



Series: Ichorblood [1]
Category: NieR: Automata (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Developing Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, No Androids, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Worldbuilding, disgraced god 9s, first romance, human shepherd 2b, inaccurate depiction of sheep care, lovecraft vibes, nines is a burnt cinnamon roll slightly charred
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:54:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24103192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faufaren/pseuds/faufaren
Summary: 2B adopts a fallen god into her flock.(Loosely inspired by the first work of this series, but is completely stand-alone.)
Relationships: 2B/9S (NieR: Automata)
Series: Ichorblood [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1737865
Comments: 9
Kudos: 48





	1. dreams are sweet until they're not

His Fall, he thinks, is neither beautiful nor peaceful. 

He clutches gracelessly at constellations and tears star systems to slow the imminent fall. They burn his hands, lash his wrists bloody. They turn his fingers black with char and his fingernails rip and bleed liquid light. 

He falls with tears in his eyes, torn out of him through the violence of anguish, though his mouth is twisted into a snarl full of rage. Ichor and spit smear across his cheek, and he screams through bloodstained teeth _**why**_ even as he is cast down, burning a path through lightyears and galaxies. 

He is ripped from his perch in the cosmos and exiled eternally from a place that would have been called home if he were called a mortal. It is not done with malicious intent, but instead with a thoughtless and unfeeling council, and somehow that blisters against his heart worse than if the act had been done in passion. 

When his wings finally decay, he screams as every feather is plucked by an invisible hand, mercilessly, every hollow bone crushed to smithereens and scattered to the endless void of space. He screams because he knows that those burns will still smoulder against his shoulders, as faint shadows of feathers seared into bleeding skin. 

An endless burning to brand him a fallen lord, a traitor, one who Overstepped. A disgraced god––falling as Icarus had fallen from the sun, flying too close to the light of forbidden knowledge. 

He screams and weeps as he plunges from the heavens, burning all the way down.

* * *

2B is tending to her flock when she sees the star fall from the sky. It is a bright shine against the cloudy barrier hanging over the valley, flickers of light seeping through the grey like fingers poking through misty fabric. 

She only sees him because she has the eyes of a hunter, and the vigilance of a guardian. 

The tiny figure in the distance is wrapped in flame, punching through the layers of the atmosphere with little effort. Ash particles scatter in his wake, and he leaves a visible blaze piercing through the clouds. 

Her flock bleats and moves restlessly, but the sheep stay in place because their shepherd keeps her peace. They trust that she will protect and provide, just as she has always done unfailingly. If their shepherd remains unmoved, they will not startle. 

But she worries nonetheless, though more with curiosity than fear. 

She has grown up in the Temple upon the valleys, raised on legends and parables and the ancient lore of their gods and goddesses. She only knows of a few that tell of things who plummet in flames from the heavens, and their lessons all speak of only one word: 

_Exile._

So she watches the boy fall into her valley, even as she keeps her vigilance on her flock grazing quietly below her. The impact into the earth should be devastating, she expects. Perhaps a crater formed, rockface torn and earth shredded. Perhaps he will set aflame the ground around him with the fire he has brought from the sky, and she will have to put it out before it destroys her valley. 

Whatever she expects would happen once the falling boy touches the earth, it certainly isn’t this: 

The wind rises suddenly, sending locks of her hair into her eyes and shrieking past to meet the boy partway to the ground, extinguishing the flames that shroud his form. A single note like an incomplete song bursts forth, intertwining with the gusts and disturbing her sheep again. 

The earth rumbles, and then, instead of breaking as it should, it surges up with green and life—stalks of corn, sheaves of wheat, tomato plants and the curling threads of grapevines. Cotton plants unfurl and cherry seedlings sprout, branches twisting into maturity along with rosemary shrubs, mushroom clusters, and elderberry bushes. The swell of spontaneous growth reaches up as if with innumerable hands and catches the boy in their waiting fold, cradling him as a mother would with her child. 

And from there, flowers bloom and burst out like a ripple in a lake, so numerous and in so many different patterns it is dizzying to look at them. The colorful flora blooms like a laughter in the throat of the valley, as if the sacred land itself is welcoming the newcomer, spreading right to the edge of her flock, nearly touching, before it softly subsides. 

The wind has turned gentle and lively, playful as it usually is in the valley. Carried upon its breeze is a haunting lullaby, sweet and hollow and bitten at the edges with sorrow, like the helpless confusion of someone who doesn't understand why they have to be in pain. 2B hears it sung into her ears and knows at once what she must do.

* * *

She leaves her flock at the edge of the impact, trusting that the sanctity of the valley will not be disturbed for the few moments she takes to retrieve the one who has Fallen. With her shepherd’s staff in hand, hunter’s knife in its sheath at her other side, she ventures into the flower field. 

The thick smell of ichor reaches her nose far before she reaches the heart of the tangle of vegetation. Ichor, the blood of greater beings, rich with the promise of eternity. A touch alone could drive a lesser creature mad. It would have been disturbing to her human senses, had she not been born on blessed soil touched by the feet of the gods who used to roam the earth. 

And then ash, burning embers of fire, and the stink of burning flesh follows soon after. It’s sharp and acrid and that is what makes 2B nearly recoil––the scent of a god in such unrelenting pain that it is a physical thing with claws, twisting their way through her more vulnerable human senses. 

When at last her eyes settle upon the figure nestled in the flowers, she is relieved to see no evidence of godly blood, no open wounds. There are only the warped impressions burned into flesh, trails of black ash smudged across fair skin. Wings, she realises. Though they’re gone now. 

The god is––smaller than she expected. Limbs splayed akimbo, fingers slightly curled near his face. One cheek buried in petals as pale hair is scattered over his eyes, flung above his head like an angel’s halo. Despite the violence of his fall, the god looks as if he has only decided to take a nap in the middle of a thriving meadow, limp and boneless in peaceful slumber. 

It is like a scene taken straight from a painting done by the old masters, those that depict classic images of seraphim and fae folk, resplendent with soft sunlight shining on bare skin and surrounded by flora and fauna of mother nature’s finest works. 

2B dares to take another step closer, then freezes as the god stirs lightly in his unconsciousness. Slim limbs sliding soundlessly over leaves and flower petals, he rolls in sluggish movement until he falls upon his back, a hand coming to rest on his chest. The movement shifts the silken strands of his hair and his head falls back to reveal a long pale neck, a dainty chin, lush lashes brushing against delicate cheekbone. 

2B stands still until she is certain that the god will not be moving again, until he has fallen back into deep slumber. She stands there, feet rooted to fertile soil, until she has realised that she has looked for far too long. And still she can’t tear her eyes away from the sight. 

It’s a slow, creeping revelation. Something like awe and wonder, stemming from the reverence for holy beings that has been ingrained into her since childhood, but not quite limited to the boundaries of such pale piety. Something blooms in her chest, tasting of sparks and ash, swelling like the flowers that had sprouted across the fields of her valley when this god had fallen into her lands. 

She looks upon this god, and tastes stardust upon her tongue. 

He’s lovely.


	2. you won't feel a thing, he said, when you go down

It’s dangerous, she knows, to love a god beyond what should be right. 

Her mother was taken away because she stole stars from the night, 2B was told as a child. She had gone too far in her devotion, had broken sacred laws in her obsessive worship. Her fragile human mind had cracked under the weight of the things she should never have touched. Gradually, she had become something other, something unnatural and wrong and entirely too powerful. In the end, the sisters at the temple were forced to rip her mother’s soul out through her eyes and burn it. 

A child far too young to recall anything coherent from that time, 2B was taken in to be part of the temple, raised by the sisters and guardians collectively. She had been trained to eventually join their ranks, becoming one of the many priestesses that protected the holy grounds of the valley. An empty valley, many others say, abandoned by the old gods who are now long gone. It has been entire millennia since a so-called greater One had set foot in that valley, some whisper, others argue—surely whatever holy about that place must have already faded away. 

That is what the ones from the Outside used to say, the ones who want to cultivate their farmland and build their towns and pave their cobbled streets. They see the fertile land of the valley and care only for self-profit, their own greed, the futures they can see only on the near horizon. 

They know nothing. Their worlds are so small, so ignorant. They have never seen what lies beyond the crest of that horizon. They have never even bothered to make the attempt. They cannot hear the melodies of the cosmos, sung in the sweet tones of children, nor will they listen to the eerie cries of wandering phantasms, dancing in between the rays of sun dappling the ground through the treetops. They have never walked on the same trails left by strange creatures that tread in limbo, and will never bathe in the lakes made from a titan’s handprint. 

The sisters of the valley’s temple have fought with warlords and neighboring kingdoms and enterprising businessmen for centuries, for millennia. They waged war to protect the sacred lands of the valley, fought bloody battles and died to keep even a single blade of grass from the stain of human greed. 

In the end, the greatest of their priestesses had gathered together to spin a spell out of their own blood—a spell to seal away the temple for eternity, shrouding it in impenetrable cloud and fog to keep it hidden from the eyes of mortals. 

Now 2B is the last of her sisters. Her weapons and her flock of hallowed sheep is all that is left of them. 

She has maintained the barrier for years, offering streams of her blood to the seal at every dawn and twilight. She works, day and night, loyally tending to the grounds that her sisters have died for. 

The valley is vast, however, and 2B is only one person. Thirty-three priestesses had weaved the spell for the barrier and then the entire temple had poured their blood into it. From the youngest infant to the oldest of the elderly, the blood of hundreds had fueled that spell for years until a plague had wiped them all out except for 2B. 

Try as she might, the barrier has grown thin since that golden era, starved on the thin trickles of a single remaining priestess. The valley, once faded into obscurity over the years, comes closer with each passing dawn to discovery. Already 2B has found the traps of huntsmen in the woods just outside her valley, cold fire pits in clearings, dented metal cups floating down her river from human campsites upstream. Already, she sees signs of outside life far too close to her valley, but she’s powerless to do anything. 

Discovery is inevitable, she has come to realize. A sacred valley with only one shepherd to tend to its land and flock is no defense. She was too late in being born, and she–– _regrets_. 

The priestesses had already been on the decline in their power even before the plague. Children were being carried to full term with decreasing rates of success, and most of the inhabitants of the valley were becoming increasingly infertile. 

Rare diseases and conditions developed in the young of the temple, many of them strange and incurable––in some, human bones twisted into the shape of tree branches, in others, flesh slowly warped and bent and stiffened, taking on the appearances of the valley’s rock faces. Hair fell out and something like blades of grass or weeds grew in replacement; an odd cough developed amongst the older adults, with pollen and flower petals coming out alongside murky phlegm. 

Some were born blind and deaf but could see the colors of creation and had the song of the universe ringing in their ears, and these children would never reach adulthood. No matter how vigilant the mothers were, how watchful the temple’s guardians were, these ones always inevitably wandered off into the woods in the moonlight, never to be seen again. 

It was a curse, whispered the worried adults, back when 2B could still scamper between their legs as a small child, evading her exasperated caretaker. The reason, the elders had eventually theorized, was because the valley had gone too long without the touch of a deity, and the naturally generated energy that had come with it. The grounds, which had enjoyed the blessings of gods for millennia before theirs, still remember what they used to have. Without a god to kindle life, the valley has begun drinking from the humans in the Temple. 

2B was born on the tailend of the last generation of her sisters, the next person closest to her age more than ten years older. By the time she was old enough to learn the moonrunes and glyphs of the old language the priestesses used to spin their spells, there was only one blind elder that remained to teach her and her peers. 

It didn’t make a difference, in the end. Even if she had memorized the complete ancient language––of which usually took decades to learn––2B was never meant to be a spell spinner. She was too headstrong, too physical-minded to wrap her mind around the intricate webs and interlaces used in the spells. Her focus, even from her youngest years, had always been on ceramic swords and shepherd’s crooks. Her path had always been that of the warriors of the temple––the users of blade and bow and arrow, protectors of their flocks and keepers of the holy grounds. 

Her valley will be discovered someday within her lifetime, or perhaps it will be discovered when the barrier spell weaved around the land falls as the last of her blood is used up. She doesn’t know which will be better––dying in glorious battle as she fights to keep invaders out of her valley, or fading quietly away in old age, offering up her blood to the spell until her last rattling breath. 

She is still young and strong now, but someday, somewhere along the line, she’ll grow old and rickety and weak. Eventually, her eyes will start to fail, her hands will grow stiff and unsteady, and her joints ridden with arthritis, her knees unable to support her daily hikes through the valley’s rocky meadows. 

The day she is unable to lead her flock to graze is the day she will know that it is the end. 2B has long resigned herself to eventually dying in the chamber where the barrier’s core dwells, bleeding out alone on the white marble slabs. 

Her veins will empty out to fuel the barrier, and she hopes that her last sacrifice, as one who has lived her life solely for the sake of the valley, will somehow make it persist for just a while more. 

Perhaps it is the years she’s spent alone, since digging the last of her sisters’ graves and having only the baying of her flock to keep her company. 2B has had a lot of time to think about how she will die. 

(What she doesn’t know, however, is that the valley has its own teeth. 2B thinks that the valley is doomed after the barrier falls, but she is wrong. 

After the valley’s last caretaker perishes quietly either on the battlefield or on shining marble, after it feels that its last groundskeeper is gone, it will grow wild and untamable. It will grow to protect itself, stones sharpening, dirt bleeding black, shadows elongating. The tree roots will gain their own snaring sentience, the flowers will turn toxic, with poisonous mushrooms thriving in the darkest corners, softly glowing to invite unsuspecting prey. 

Without a shepherd, the hallowed flock will run free and savage. They will grow horns and gain the teeth of carnivores, able to hunt and prey and feed as they never have––never had to––under the guidance of the Temple’s humans. They will be like dark beasts of the wild night, haunting and beautiful and terrifying at the same time. 

What 2B doesn’t know is that the people of the Temple don't protect the Valley from the outside world. They protect the world from what the Valley can become.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i feel like i’ve forgotten how to write, i’m just typing words that vaguely feel right and calling it a story.


End file.
